Borg Diocese and TONO have entered into an agreement on licensing the digital use of music. Here is everything your congregation or parish needs to know about rights, use and reporting.
/ 26/08/2021 / Kristian DugstadThe composer and lyricist cooperative TONO has entered into an agreement with the Borg diocese regarding the use of music on digital platforms.
The agreement is intended to make the church's digital use of music as simple and efficient as possible, while ensuring that the right composers and lyricists are paid when their music is used in church.
The agreement gives parishes in the Borg Diocese a number of rights. It also describes how parishes should report to TONO. You can read more about this here.
The agreement with TONO gives parishes in the Borg diocese the right to make TONO's repertoire available to the public in the following ways:
The agreement gives the parishes in the diocese permission to post up to 500 videos with an average of 1,5 minutes of music per video. In other words, the Borg diocese can publish recordings with up to 750 minutes of music in total.
The agreement takes into account publication on the congregations' websites, social media accounts and other digital channels. The agreement includes the streaming that occurs on these websites/platforms, whether such streaming takes place as a linear broadcast or on demand.
Please note that TONO grants permission to use music on behalf of the composers. If recorded music is to be used in a video, permission to use the recording rights must also be obtained from the record companies that have released the recording.
Congregations must report the music they use to TONO so that TONO can send money to the correct composers and lyricists.
NOTE: As of 2021, there are different methods for reporting depending on how the music is used.
Physical church services are not regulated in the agreement, and the congregations do not pay compensation for these. They must still be reported.
In addition to the digital report, TONO needs some additional information about viewership in order to calculate compensation. For each live service, congregations must report the date and viewers/music minutes to the Borg diocese. The Borg diocese has created a separate system for this, and reports this information to TONO once a year.
The information must include the production title and publication date of the production, length of the production, hymn number (if available), work title and copyright holder (if hymn number is not used), playing time used (number of seconds of the work used in the production in question) and the number of plays/viewers/music minutes played on all musical works that have been available in accordance with the agreement, as well as any income related to the use.
TONO is currently working on further developing the digital reporting service, and in the future additional information will also be able to be reported here, which will eliminate the need for spreadsheet solutions.
The story continues below the video.
Copyright has two spheres: the economic and the moral. TONO only manages the economic, and it is based in particular on §3 on the author's exclusive right to make available and reproduce his work and §69 on reasonable remuneration.
The ideal rights is described in § 5. This concerns protection against infringing use of the work, and the right to be named when the work is used. This is outside TONO's management.
The moral side of the law gives authors the right to refuse to have their music used in contexts that are perceived as offensive. This can be, among other things, political or religious. Congregations in the Church of Norway must exercise caution and use discretion when using secular music in a religious context, as some authors may perceive this as a violation of their moral rights. TONO does not manage these rights, and cannot clarify them on behalf of authors. If the congregation is in doubt, contact the author of the work or the person in question's music publisher.
Section 40 of the Copyright Act provides free use of music in religious ceremonies, which means that congregations do not pay TONO for the use of music during physical church services. For this use, the composer's payment is covered by an annual transfer from the Ministry of Culture to TONO. Congregations must still report to TONO what has been performed.
So-called free repertoire however, denotes music that is no longer copyrighted. Music falls into the public domain in the 70th year after the composer's death. This means that in 2021, if all the creators of a work died in 1950 or before, the work can be performed without having to clear rights with TONO. The guideline here is that it is not necessary to report performances where exclusively free works are used.
If it is used in a context where both protected and free repertoire is used, then still report everything to TONO.